60 N.H. 38 | N.H. | 1880
The receipt of payment of the consideration expressed in a deed of conveyance, or any instrument of assignment under seal, cannot be contradicted for the purpose of defeating the conveyance or assignment; but for any other purpose the true consideration may be shown. Pritchard v. Brown,
The claimant's position, that wages to be earned could not be assigned, and so there could have been no conveyance fraudulent against the defendant's creditors, would, if tenable, defeat the assignee's claim; for to succeed he must make out a valid assignment. An assignment of wages to be earned, under a contract of labor existing at the time of the assignment, is valid; but wages to be earned generally and indefinitely, without regard to any contract of labor, cannot be assigned. A mere possibility is incapable of assignment. If coupled with an interest, it is assignable. Mulhall v. Quinn, 1 Gray 105; Hartley v. Tapley, 2 Gray 565, 566; Emery v. Lawrence, 8 Cush. 151; Brackett v. Blake, 7 Met. 335; Low v. Pew,
The statute of 1873, c. 9, s. 1, Gen. Laws, c. 249, s. 48, making all assignments of wages to be earned invalid against the laborer's creditors, unless accepted by the employer and filed in the town-clerk's office, did not provide a device for making illegal and fraudulent assignments legal, any more than the statute provisions relating to the execution and recording of mortgages made fraudulent mortgages valid. The law provided a way for a general notice of the assignment, and left the qualities of the contract, as to fraud and good faith, as they were before the statute, which, in a case like this, will not protect the assignee.
Trustee charged.
BINGHAM, J., did not sit: the others concurred.